What does great mental health look like?

What does great mental health look like?

Think of someone you consider to have great mental health…..

It might be someone you know well, someone you know of vaguely, a celebrity or a fictional character. It doesn’t matter.

What is it about them that makes you think they have great mental health?

What great mental health ISN’T

Great mental health isn’t about being happy all the time.

It’s not about being vivacious or very confident.

It’s not about being optimistic.

It isn’t about every day being perfect.

It isn’t about you doing everything perfectly.

It’s not even about having your shit together all of the time!

Quite often when we think of someone who we consider to have great mental health, we conjure up someone that is always happy, confident, laughing, and who is the ‘life and soul of the party’ so to speak. But this isn’t always a sign of mental strength. In fact, sometimes it can be quite the opposite. It certainly isn’t a solid indication. Many celebrities for example who are happy go lucky, smiley, funny jokers, suffer terribly with anxiety or depression… look at Robin Williams!

Being optimistic is also not an indication of how good a person’s mental health is. In reality, being optimistic often leads to being disappointed and is largely based on things outside of our control going well “We’ll stay optimistic that the weather will be good on the day”… then it rains.

Optimism can actually make you feel more out of control and helpless and lead to feelings associated with depression.

Life isn’t perfect whether you have great mental health or not. Someone with a seemingly great life does not always have great mental health and the opposite – some people who do not seemingly have a great life can still have amazing mental health!

In a nutshell, what we see on the outside is not always what is reflected on the inside.

So what IS great mental health?

People who have really good, solid mental health don’t have perfect lives. They don’t handle things perfectly.

They do however think in helpful ways that make them feel in control of their life and the way in which they respond to it.

They have a good understanding of themselves and their emotions and know how to control and regulate them.

They take responsibility for their thoughts and feelings rather than blame other people, situations or events.

Good mental health is about being positive and resilient in the light of reality and knowing that you can cope with whatever happens. That life and people are not always within your control but that knowledge not needing to impact the way that you feel or have a negative impact on your self-esteem.

Having belief in your ability to cope and tolerate things that make you feel uncomfortable is a powerful thing. It also means that you are more likely to try new things and take on challenges without fearing failure or judgement.

It’s about caring about how you treat others but not being impacted by how they treat you or relying on other people to build you up or bring you down.

How do you get great mental health?

Nobody has great mental health by accident. Just like no one has great physical health by accident. It is an active process, something that needs to be ‘done’ and that can be had by anyone!

It is too easy to believe that people like this are only that way because of luck, circumstance or because it is a fixed part of their personality. It’s not. It is something that is learned, created and built on over time. It is a skillset.

The beauty of a skill is that anyone can learn it. It may take practise. It may take perseverance. It may take time. But it can be done.

Great mental health is about a set of skills that you learn, hone and practise that set you up for good habits for life and as long as you continue to hone them, just like you would head to the gym or go for a run to maintain physical fitness, you can have great mental health that will last a lifetime.